All right, I'm ready to dive back in.
(Rolls)
Oh god... we're gonna be here a while.
CHAPTER 8: The Gears of Fate
Most of the student body stared at Oobleck's lifeless form for some time. At first, we didn't know what to do with him. He was the first faculty member to actually DIE like this.
"I think," Coco said aloud, "he took down Sky, but got bit in the process... He killed himself to protect us."
"But Sky has to have been the first, right?" asked Jaune. "I mean, didn't we establish that Velvet was today's victim?"
"Well..." I began, skating a thin line between truth and deception for Blake's sake, "That's not... the only possibility. There's a chance that Velvet got Sky before she was killed."
"How would you think that?" Neptune asked. "You weren't there, right?"
"No, but..." I paused. "During her escape, Nora bit someone. I... took care of that situation, but it proves something- it's entirely possible that either Velvet or Sky, whichever one came first, was able to infect the other on their first night."
Cinder closed her eyes. "This wasn't supposed to happen," she said. "None of this was. If this Grimm hadn't entered the school, we'd probably be getting ready to set off for Amity Colusseum by now for the Vytal Festival."
"A festival which," added Coco, "will certainly have to be put on hold. With this monster in the school, we have no possible way to even guaruntee that the tournament will go on I lost half of my team now, and CRDL, JNPR and SSSN are also each down a member. But even if teams like CMSN and RWBY stay intact, this is too big a deal to just drop."
"Yeah," Yang finished, "this has to stop. And it has to stop soon. I'm sick and tired of watching people die."
My eyes crossed the room. Everyone seemed on edge. From my team alone, we had Ruby, who was starting to get really scared. So was Yang, but she was more worried for the sake of her sister and uncle. I was worried for half the people in this one room. But Blake was worried for a different reason... and we all know what that reason is now, so I won't go over it now.
We wound up burying Oobleck outside the school. His grave was honestly nothing special. But it would mean a lot to us. Actually, we'd lined up a lot more gravestones outside, too, each with their own epitath:
LIAM PRYCE - You were the first. But the first isn't always the least.
YATSUHASHI DAICHI - The biggest men leave the largest voids.
SUN WUKONG - Fun in a barrel, now shut forever.
VELVET SCARLATINA - Our little lost rabbit, never to return.
SKY LARK - Forgotten by many, pitied by all.
BARTHOLOMEW OOBLECK - We never understood you until it was too late.
As we read each epitath, we felt more of ourselves die inside. Velvet, Sun, and now Oobleck- all of them had been close friends. And now they were gone. Blake pointed out that Adam was staring at the area where Velvet and Sun's graves were.
"This thing doesn't take sides," he muttered. "Gods... Human, faunus, it doesn't matter what you are anymore. This monster hunts all. This has to stop..."
I stared at him for a moment. "Adam, are you angry at a monster that kills humans?"
"I'm not in this for your kind, Schnee," he said. "And I never will be. But as long as that creature draws breath, the world is in danger." He turned to Blake. "I joined the White Fang to make the worls a better place for faunus everywhere. And if that means helping the same humans that enslave us..." He paused for a moment. "Then so be it. I'm not about to watch the world burn because of one Grimm."
"I'm glad you're starting to be less of a vengeful craphead," Blake replied. "I can only imagine what you would have been like if you hadn't tried to strike against mankind while we were in the Fang together."
He smiled for a moment, looking first at her, then me, then at Ruby and Yang. "But then you wouldn't even be here," he replied. "Guess you're lucky I took so damn long to change my mind."
The next morning, as I had proposed, we broke off into groups. Everyone did. Not just RWBY, but every team at Beacon had adopted my "cross-team partnership" strategy. I remember pushing open the door to team CPPR's dorm room- that was Penny's team, she was the first "P"- and beckoning for my dark-haired companion to follow.
The room was just as I'd expected it to be. It was a normal bedroom for four normal people. I don't know what I'd been expecting.
"It seems normal enough," I told Cinder. "We should double-check though, just to be safe."
The two of us wound up frisking through the whole room. Two of the beds turned up with no clues whatsoever. The other two, though, were... most interesting.
"Look at this," Cinder said, pointing to one of the beds. One end of the bed was dented, as if whoever slept in it had hit their head on it particularly hard.
"So it's a dent," I pointed out. "So what?"
"Look at the dented area," she elaborated. "There seems to be copper-colored paint chipped off on this steel."
"Chipped off?" I asked. "Wouldn't that mean something painted in a copper tone-"
"Hit the bed?" she finished. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too." She then pulled the matress off of the bed-
-and screamed.
"What is it?" I frantically asked. But when I looked down, I saw. The area beneath the bed was hollow, almost like a box. In fact, without the matress covering it, one wouldn't even know there was a secret compartment.
A secret compartment with a dead body in it.
Specifically, the dead body of some sort of snake faunus, his forked tongue and scaled back clear to see. Dried blood pooled in the bottom of the boy's makeshift coffin, staining his black hair red. It almost looked like Ruby's hair- if Ruby's hair were dyed with blood instead of naturally multi-toned. Still not sure how THAT happened.
"What the..." I began, looking for answers. I turned over his body, and saw the all-too-familiar bite mark on his neck. "Ah."
Cinder finally regained her composure. "So... there's a Nosferatu in Team CPPR, then?"
"Not necessarily," I said, "but most likely. Still, it's entirely possible he could have been planted here as a cover-up, and as a possible framing device."
"That makes sense," she replied. "Although... we still have another bed to check."
I lifted the matress of the fourth, perfectly normal bed. Underneath it was something I had not expected to see.
"Is that..." I thought aloud. "No way... This is the blood bag Nora sent Ren after she escaped."
"What would THAT be doing here?" Cinder asked. "It doesn't seem to be open."
I paused. Then, I thought of my answer.
"Emmi!" I shouted. "She's so paranoid, she'd be able to find anything. We passed this to Yang to hide, but..."
"Of course!" She facepalmed. "She hid the bag under the victim's bed, planning to make the night a stakeout. However, she was expelled yesterday, preventing that. She set the trap, but she wasn't here to spring it."
My eyes drifted back to the unfortunate soul Emmi had likely intended to use as collateral. "So this was his bed," I thought aloud. "But then, why was he hidden under the other one? No, HOW was he hidden under the other one? The bed had to have someone sleeping in it."
"Hm..." thought Cinder. "If I had to guess, I'd say either the occupant of the bed above his coffin is already in the ground, or they're our culprit."
The sound of the doorknob behind us jostled us awake. We turned around to see a bright red cloak almost slapping me in the face.
"Weiss!" cried Ruby, a smile on her face. "Glad you're okay! I was just bringing Penny back to her room- we were looking through the JNPR dorm, and we found a lot of really weird stuff, but nothing was super clue-worthy, other than stuff that Nora was involved with..." Her smile started to fade. "What's going on?"
I closed my eyes, trying to explain. "We found another body, Ruby." As the words left my mouth, Penny dashed by my side to see her fallen teammate.
"Python?" she asked. "Python... please, wake up..."
Another stretch of sadness followed as we buried another one of our own. Ruby, Cinder and I had never met Python Vince, but somehow we all felt some sort of pity for him.
PYTHON VINCE - Cold-blooded, but warm-hearted.
That has to be one of the cheeziest things I've ever seen engraved on a tombstone, but Penny liked it, so there was no arguing.
The day wasn't over yet, though. Yang and Coco soon arrived with their report on Team CMSN's quarters. By now, Adam and Blake had returned, so they were present.
And Yang revealed so much more than expected. It wasn't about Python's murder. It wasn't even related to the case. It was about Cinder.
"You have a lot to tell us," she started. "Beginning with this." She held out a dark red notebook. Almost immediately, Cinder shot a fireball at the notebook, incinerating it.
"Okay, first off?" Yang said. "Touchy. Second, awesome Semblance. And third? A good investigator always copies the documents. And I read them, too. Anyone here care to guess what Cinder's hiding?" Her eyes were red- not blood-red, like the nosferatu, but more of her famous, Angry Yang red.
We were about to ask when Penny's teammates, Ciel and Randall, pulled Cinder away and began asking questions about Python's death. Among all of the questions that were asked, most of them were about the attack itself. We told them our theory, but then Ciel asked the kicker.
"Okay, but what I want to know is: What was Python's corpse doing under Penny's bed?"
Penny's bed?
Oh gods, no.
Yang had gone back to the RWBY dorm in order to prepare our team for the truth about Cinder. The CMSN leader stayed behind me and Blake, knowing she would have to answer for everything. We turned the corner, about to walk straight towards the room. But then we saw- and heard- something absolutely terrifying.
Our eyes told us that Ruby was outside the dorms, with what was probably the most panicked look in the world on her face. She was holding the door shut. We heard her terrified whimpers... and we also heard a low, inhuman growl from behind the door.
I knew exactly what was behind that door. I gulped. Blake looked horrified, having realized who the monster had decided to visit tonight. Even Cinder looked uncomfortable with the situation. I paced toward the door, reaching into my satchel and pulling out one of the stakes Oobleck had provided me with.
I let Ruby step back from the door, and grasped the doorknob. I turned it to face the nosferatu within, tears already beginning to flow; and then I swung my arm, letting the stake fly.
That night was straight out of a horror movie. The good news was that I'd killed the nosferatu. The bad news is that it left Ruby in tears and Blake in denial.
That night, the three of us held a private funeral. All of us spoke some words in the victim's memory, Ruby most of all. The rest of the class, one by one, joined in, apparently not having gotten the memo that the funeral was "private," but that was a blessing in disguise. Our final moments with the victim were quiet.
I remember Qrow being the last to speak. He said there would never be anyone else with that kind of attitude. And that he would try to make sure Ruby didn't meet the same fate.
We lowered the body into the grave after that. I couldn't really read the tombstone through my tears, but later, Blake would recall its words to me. I've been haunted ever since that night- the night I killed my first nosferatu.
The night I killed a close friend.
YANG XIAO LONG - Even the most beautiful flames eventually flicker out.
A\N: Oh dear god. I actually killed off Yang.
Deep down, I knew this day would come. Yang was my favorite RWBY character for a long time, and when I started this fic I somehow had a sneaking suspicion that I would have to terminate her life. But having to do it now... Geez, what a mood I'm in.
Also, I started crying back when I was writing the epitaths for the other dead characters (Velvet especially). I also added Cinder to fill out the "featured characters" tags. So that's nice.
Adam Taurus - Living
Bartholomew Oobleck - Slain (C7)
Blake Belladonna - Converted (C4)
Cardin Winchester - Living
Cinder Fall - Living
Coco Adel - Living
Emerald Sustrai - Living
Emmi Wynn - Expelled (C7)
Fox Alistair - Living
Jaune Arc - Living
Liam Pryce - Converted, Slain (C1)
Lie Ren - Living
Mercury Black - Living
Neo Politan - Living
Neptune Vasalias - Living
Nora Valkyrie - Converted (C3), Escaped (C4)
Orson Drew - Living
Ozpin - Living
Penny Polendina - Living*
Peter Port - Living
Pyrrha Nikos - Living
Qrow Branwen - Living
Ruby Rose - Living
Sun Wukong - Murdered (C5)
Velvet Scarlatina - Converted (C6), Slain (C7)
Weiss Schnee - Living
Yang Xiao Long - Converted, Slain (C8)
Yatsuhashi Daichi - Murdered (C2)
Yin Kasumi - Living
-Technically, Penny is SUSPICIOUS due to a body found under her bed. But she's not confirmed dead or converted.